Re: CHAT YAEPT :Re: Phonological musings (was: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton")

Roger Mills wrote:

> Mark J. Reed wrote:
>>On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 04:15:41AM -0400, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>>>Additionally, I guess that at that time, this kind of RP was considered
>>>the
>>>**standard pronunciation** of English.
(responding to Mach)

Best to bear in mind that there are many divirgent local varieties of
English (naturally I'm thinking of especially of the Irish variety)
which *didn't* look to an English or UK English as a standard, and indeed,
positively denied it any authority. To me, growing up in Ireland,
the English I heard on BBC was no more a reference or standard variety
than, say, South African English - comprehensible, but alien.

(and to Roger)

> Perhaps a better description would be _prestige_ pronunciation, the result
...
> (1) did one hear a regional accent. In movies too, of course. Meanwhile the
> populace at large spoke as they wished.
Absolutely.


> I don't know enough about modern British social history to say "when things
> changed" there...but the Beeb I hear now has far more varied accents than
> anything in the US.
And in England, listening to TV, I heard widely varying accents on every
channel. I imagine there must be places in England (not just the UK!)
where RP/Estuary sounds positively foreign (just like here in Ireland,
where BBC, [IU]TV & C4 are widely available).

Still, referring to the wider "educated English" 'lect, to my ear, there
is much of elegance in it (cf. "stall" in my sig - a tra[slation|sduction]
of course), even if the promulgation of its pronunciation as "standard" is
a bit suspect.


> As for Upper Class speech (and I don't mean just Wealthy), I doubt this
> country ever had anything as pervasive as England's; each of the old major
> cities -- Boston, NYC, Phila, Charleston, New Orleans to name the best
Exqueeze me, but where's this Charleston Of Which You Speak? WV or SC? Or
somewhere else?

s,
--
Stephen Mulraney    ataltane@ataltane.net   http://livejournal.com/~ataltane
I remember that I tried several times to use a slide rule, and that, several
times also,  I began modern maths textbooks, saying to myself that if I were
going slowly,  if I read all the lessons all in order,   doing the exercises
and all, there was no reason why I should stall             -- Georges Perec

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